The Amazing Race: Attack of the Entirely Harmless Tomatoes

For some reason, this is the season of eating challenges. We've had fish eyes, cow lips, and now, this week, camel burgers. And it seems that the producers have overplayed their hand, because the teams are mostly over the eating challenges by now. They actually like the camel meat, because everything tastes good to Americans when it's been ground, seasoned and grilled. They were probably only sorry that there weren't fries with that. And I have to ask: does the show not allow vegetarians? What if a little person beauty queen former POW with a prosthetic leg who'd been laid off from Enron and had trouble conceiving tried out for the show and was a vegetarian? Would they tell that person to take a hike?

In Barcelona (say hi to the Top Model bitches!), we have one of the greatest Detours ever, as one of the options is based on the famous Tomatina tomato fight. Sweet! Never have I wanted to be on this show more than when I saw this Detour. Not as a racer, mind you, but as one of the extras who gets to pelt the racers with tomatoes. (Meanwhile, Tyra is watching this and thinking, "Damn, that would be a fierce photo shoot!") The extras look like they're having a blast, as opposed to the teams, who whine about getting tomatoes thrown at them. If Rob's testimony is accurate, Kimberly is only there five minutes before she loses her mind completely, screeching and threatening to quit. And although it's one of those needle-in-a-haystack Detours, the two teams who choose it (Lyn and Karlyn are the other) manage to come in first and second. Since this Detour option was all the way out of town, the other one must really have sucked.

Dustin and Kandice, who chose the sucktastic Detour, are eliminated, as it was obvious they would be from about halfway through the show. So now the hopes of an all-female team winning rest on Lyn and Karlyn, who, as Phil points out, are the only all-female team to make it to the final three. And when I realized Phil was right, I felt very sad. But I don't think they'll win, because they've never really dominated. Unless Tyler and James screw up or another team gets very good luck, the guys are going to win.